Howdy, Steem!
I've been into 360 videos since a while ago. I thought the technology was really cool, and that in the future most if not all the media will be consumed in the Virtual Reality format. I work in a digital media company as a video performance analyst and I see the increase in the interest for 360 content. It's very cool to have the opportunity to temporarily transfer anywhere in the world, and immerse yourself in a new situation without leaving your home.
Sadly, the existing sub-$500 cameras produced low-quality videos with very noticeable stitch lines, and in order to get rid of them one had to buy and learn expensive software (PTGui, Kolor, Mistika VR...). Mistika is relatively easy to learn but unless you use it professionally and make good money from producing content, it is hard to justify the spending. The 30-day license without the subscription is 79 EUR, or 69 EUR with an annual subscription.
In August of 2017 I have received the Insta360 Pro camera (affiliate Amazon link). It is an 8K 360 camera with 6 separate fish-eye lenses. It films in 4K, 6K and 8K, and comes with its own stitching software, the latest release (Nov. 2017) is pretty decent and unless the objects are really close to the camera you can usually avoid seeing the stitches. 4K Can be stitched in-camera, and 6K and 8K would need to be done on the computer. Yes, it's a pretty expensive camera, but I thought it was worth it as it's a one-time investment - the plan was to focus on building a portfolio and using it for commercial filming (rentals and real estate as I have old friends who make a living as realtors), and if things go south there it has decent resale value. Compared to other cameras on the market it has the highest resolution and the lowest price. Sonicam still isn't released and it's MSRP is $3999 vs. $3499 for the Insta360 Pro, and $4999 GoPro Omni does not come with software so you'd need to drop another $700 on Autopano, and I wasn't the fan of having to take care of 6 individual GoPro's vs. just once camera.
Anyway, I spent September and October filming content, which I have about 1 TB of (the footage is damn HEAVY, 120 GB SSD that I run it with only gets me 1 hour and 15 minutes, which isn't a lot if you want to be safe and allow 5-7 minutes per scene to crop out the unusable scenes - and there is a lot of people that walk by during filming who want to take a closer look at it). Vancouver is a beautiful city, and I do a lot of camping around the mountains and especially hot springs nearby that I want to film, so I have a lot of plans for it.
Anyway, here is the latest video that I put together. The stitching was done in the native software, and post-production in Premiere Pro, which now supports editing of 360 videos. The transitions are from Mantle VR, which has been acquired by Adobe.
